Ferrari Confirms Plan For Utility Vehicle, Expand Hybrid Offerings

It's all about those sweet, sweet profits

It was about a month ago that we reported on the rumor of Ferrari working on an SUV, a complete 180 from Ferrari Chairman (and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO) Sergio Marchionne's “you have to shoot me first” answer when asked about this last year. That rumor has been revealed to be true.

During a conference call reporting second-quarter earnings, Marchionne confirmed that the Italian sports car builder is considering an expansion into utility vehicles and possibly reinvent the segment.

"It will probably happen but it will happen in Ferrari’s style,” said Marchionne.

"That space is too big and too inviting and we have a lot of our customers who will be more than willing to drive a Ferrari-branded vehicle that has that king of utilitarian objective."

Marchionne also reiterated the “you have to shoot me first” comment is if Ferrari comes up with something similar to the models from Bentley or Porsche.

Bloomberg learned from sources earlier in the week about Ferrari considering adding an SUV to their lineup in an effort to double profits by 2022. The model would be targeted at customers in Asia, particularly those in China. This could add an extra 2,000 sales for the company. But this could bring up a big problem for Ferrari. Currently, Ferrari produces under 10,000 vehicles a year to avoid various emission regulations. By possibly adding an SUV, Ferrari would now have to meet them. According to sources, Ferrari is planning on introducing more hybrid models beginning in 2019 to meet the various regulations.

Next year, Marchionne will be presenting his final five-year business plan for FCA and their various brands. We'll likely find out then if Ferrari is going forward on the utility vehicle.

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$400k for a V12 SUV and they'll probably sell everyone they make. Easy profit. Not surprised they are doing this. Why would Ferrari want their owners going to Mercedes or Range Rover for their SUV, when they can provide it.

A year later in 2015, China takes on an aggressive clean up effort. 66% of China power in 2013 was from coal, 2014 it actually dropped to 64% and down to 62% for 2015 leading to the coal price slump that caused in 2016 for all coal companies in the US to declare Bankruptcy. Production from Coal has already dropped to 53.7% now and will continue to drop as China pushes to go below 50% by 2020 and to reduce ICE auto's to 50% by 2030.

Here is an updated story that was published in March 2016 showing China dropped another 3.7% in coal use and they are shutting down and cleaning up open pit mines in the country. The drive to improve health of their people and their country is a primary push as they move to alternative green forms of power production and consumption.

Over all, at least what is reported tends to show China aggressively changing how they do things. Nuclear, Wind and Solar for them is growing much faster, so I would say they are following the history of what the US has done.

China produces 71% of the solar modules worldwide in comparison to 1.3% produced in the US. in 2010 China only had 800 MW (Mega Watts) of solar production and now at the end of 2015 43,500 MW of power production. 50 times increase.

Under China's 5 yr plan, they will triple solar power production by 2020.

China is leading the world in wind power energy production and surpassed the earlier info by 65%. China had at the end of 2016 487 Gigawatts of Wind power production. They have stated in their 5 year plan that the country will produce 800 GW of power by 2021. China is working to close in on the largest producer of power via wind India.

Over all, these green alternative forms of power production will help China reduce and possibly surpass the US in being green and clean by 2030.

The US needs to WAKE up to the Green production movement and companies like Ferrari needs to look at Hybrid and EV CUV's.

V12 powered ICE auto's are NOT needed when we have proof of how powerful a Tesla X is. Ferrari hopefully will focus on beating Tesla with a superior Luxury CUV!

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Given the current administration, the USA will not be leaders in renewable energy anytime soon. Our current president digs coal, even though coal is an inefficient power source compared to natural gas, oil, and most renewable sources and nuclear energy.

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Given the current administration, the USA will not be leaders in renewable energy anytime soon. Our current president digs coal, even though coal is an inefficient power source compared to natural gas, oil, and most renewable sources and nuclear energy.

I'm not sure he cares about coal (or comprehends power sources), I think that talk is just marketing propaganda to appeal to his base..